Delhi-based development organisation, Smile Foundation, and Gujarat based NGO, MARAG, launched a mobile hospital ‘Smile On Wheels’ on Saturday.
Newly merged areas and villages around Ahmedabad will soon get medical help at their doorstep. Delhi-based development organisation, Smile Foundation, and Gujarat based NGO, MARAG, launched a mobile hospital ‘Smile On Wheels’ on Saturday. With the launch, Ahmedabad became 9th city to get ‘Smile On wheels’ in the country.
Smile Foundation has made the mobile hospital costing Rs20 lakh and handed it over to MARAG to start operation in 22 villages around Ahmedabad. MARAG officials say the mobile hospital will provide general health check-up and medication to people. But the focus of ‘Smile on Wheels’ remains on women and children in slum areas (with around one lakh target people in initial phase).
“The mobile van has facilities to cater to patients’ need of emergency surgery. It has X-ray machine, electrocardiography machine, dark room and small operation theatre, stretcher, oxygen cylinder, autoclaves. The purpose of ‘Smile on Wheels’ is to reach out to poor people and not attending medical emergency,” said project head of Smile Foundation, Manju M.
Services provided by the van include facility to identify high-risk pregnancy, basic pathological services, referral services for serious patients, distribution of condoms and oral contraceptive pills, and treatment of malnutrition cases.
For director of MARAG, Lalji Desai, who lost his sister because of unavailability of medical care at the right time, ‘Smile on Wheel’ is like “dream come true”. “We will charge a nominal fee.”
“MARAG is also considering tie-ups with hospitals so that people who need further medical treatment can be sent to hospitals where fee is affordable to common people,” said Prof Dr MM Prabhakar, of BJ Medical College, while inaugurating the van.
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